The Lost Loved Ones

About the Book

The Lost Loved Ones focuses on the tribulations of a Dakota family of the tribe’s scout, Takota, who befriends the trapper, Jon Griswald, whom they know as “Troubled Spirit”, and who chooses to live along the Mississippi River before it is developed by Polish settlers. After Griswald’s death, the Takota family,who had lived with him, is decimated, all except one of the two sons, Kohana, who has left with indigenous travelers, and the youngest, Anpayto, whom the settlers call, Anya, and who tries to adapt to the ways of the settlers, which are totally unfamiliar to her. Eventually, her brother, Kohana, with a Medicine Man, returns and rescues Anpayto to take her and her two children back with him to Canada where the Dakota tribe now lives and where she can reunite with the childhood love of her life, Chayton. The story reveals the clash of two cultures, the Indigenous one of people who already lived in the wilderness that they loved and lovingly cared for, and the Polish settlers who, themselves, had lost their land in Europe and faced the hardships of a wilderness that they tried to conquer and supplant with their civilization on this terribly beautiful country and it’s people.

About the Author

Though the author of The Lost Loved Ones, Joanne C. Herrmann, was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota; she was not made aware of the 1862 Dakota War, until many years later, after she had retired from teaching and was living in Hawaii. She discovered the historical event after viewing a video of a Commemorative walk on behalf of the hanging of thirty eight men after the Dakota Warr (also known as the Great Sioux Uprising). It still holds the dubious recognition of being the greatest mass hanging in U.S. history. . Somewhat chagrined at the suppression of this significant event, she researched and recreated the Dakota War and its injustice as the background to her story, immersed as it is in a Polish settlement in Northeast Minneapolis with which she was familiar. Some of her insights and skills are derived from her MA in Theology from Marquette University (MU) and her MA in English from the University of Florida (UNF). After having taught Religion in Illinois and English in Florida and Hawaii, she returned to Jacksonville, Florida where she retired from teaching but continued to hone her writing skills in a Florida Times Union Community Column/Blog.. She is presently a widow, living in Florida near her three grown children and three grandchildren.